Power BI Service and Mobile June Feature Summary

June was an exciting month for Power BI! Read on for a summary of the features that we released in both the service and mobile. Also, remember that with Premium, features in the Power BI service accrues to both the SaaS and embedded analytics use cases!

June also played host to the Microsoft Data Insights Summit. The conference featured a jam-packed itinerary, with dozens of sessions from leading industry experts. A huge thank you to those who came. And, for those who couldn’t make it, you can check out the recordings of the keynote and individual sessions. We hope to see you next year!

Finally, we also released the Power BI Enterprise Deployment Whitepaper in June. This free whitepaper is filled with guidance for deploying Power BI in your Enterprise. It walks through use cases and best practices for connecting to data sources, distributing your content, governing usage, and much more. Download it free here.

Power BI Premium generally available

We announced the general availability of Power BI Premium – the next step in our commitment to empower people and organizations with access to critical intelligence. The offering enables the distribution of reports broadly across an enterprise and externally, without requiring recipients to be individually licensed. And, since Power BI Premium consists of capacity in the Power BI service exclusively dedicated to an organization, the offering provides the flexibility to customize performance based on the needs of a team, department, or the organization itself. More info

API improvements

We released a flurry of enhancements to the Power BI APIs, making it easier than ever to automate your critical Power BI workflows. As a reminder, these APIs are fully supported in the Power BI service for both the SaaS and embedded analytics use cases. You can now use the API to automate scheduled refresh, clone and rebind reports, update gateway bindings, and much, much more. Read through the documentation or sample code to get started, and stay tuned for much more information to come!

Relative links in Power BI apps

With relative links, you can create links from dashboard tiles to other dashboards and reports that work whether the dashboard is shared directly, or distributed through a Power BI app. This allows you to create rich, interactive dashboards that allow users to drill through to content of your choosing. Click the “edit” icon on any tile in your dashboards to get started.

Impala connector support

New On-Premises Data Gateway (Personal mode)

We shipped a new, enhanced version of the On-premises data gateway (personal mode). New features in this release include: an improved Fast Combine experience, ability to delete the gateway from the Power BI portal, export logs functionality, and enhanced overall reliability and performance. Install the new gateway. Documentation on the new gateway, how to install it, and list of FAQs can be found here. Let us know in this forum thread if you have any feedback or questions!

Note: Refreshes through your existing personal gateway (Power BI Gateway − Personal) will stop working after July 31st, 2017; please ensure that you upgrade to the new gateway by July 31st, 2017 to keep your datasets up to date.

Favorite apps in Power BI mobile

Favorites can be used as a quick access to your data. Now, after launching Power BI apps, we added the option to favorite apps in mobile. Favorited apps will appear in the favorites tab. Also, when you favorite a dashboard or app, it will become the default landing page for the mobile app. It’s never been easier to keep tab on the data that matters most.

Faster report loads in Power BI mobile

We’ve made a number of significant improvements to the report loading and caching in mobile. As a result, you should see that report loads are snappier than ever!

Mobile responsive layouts

In June, we gave dashboard and report authors the ability to create responsive layouts for their content. Responsive visualizations automatically adapt their size to offer a data-optimized view across different screen sizes. Now, you can create one visualization which renders gorgeously across a huge variety of form factors – from the smallest phones to the largest conference room displays.

Interactive R custom visuals

Prior to July, developers could already create R custom visuals that plug into Power BI reports. This enables report authors to harness those custom visuals without needing to learn R. This is a powerful way to extend the visualization capabilities of Power BI. We announced that R custom visuals can now also be interactive, allowing for even richer R integrations and unlocking a new world of possibilities. This is done by generating HTML for the visual, instead of the static image that was previously supported. In addition to interactivity, R custom visuals are also capable of supporting tooltips and selections. Learn more

Resources

See our documentation for a full view of present and past updates in service and mobile.

Have questions, or feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to cast your votes on UserVoice to help us prioritize features. Also, feedback and questions are always welcome in the comments below, or on the community forums.